Israel Seals Hebron as 200 Families Are Displaced Overnight
Israeli forces have raided at least 15 towns across the northern West Bank and sealed Hebron, closing seven of its entrances. The city’s municipality says up to 200 families were forced from one neighbourhood overnight. The army says the operation will last several days. Israel votes on Tuesday.
Friday was the announcement; overnight it became execution. Bulldozers wrecked a three-storey building, hundreds more families were ordered out of a second area, and a correspondent on the ground reports the army using emptied homes as temporary outposts and raising the Israeli flag over them. Israel’s high court has issued a temporary order halting the demolitions after an urgent petition by a human rights lawyer, who said: “What we saw today was an attempt to copy the illegal practices used in Gaza, in the heart of the West Bank.” The defence minister, Israel Katz, was explicit about the model: “The Jenin refugee camp model arrives in Hebron. Every clan neighbourhood in Hebron from which the terrorists emerged today will be evacuated of its residents.” The Israeli rights group B’Tselem says the offensive amounts to “collective punishment and acts that could constitute war crimes”. Two cautions belong here. The 200-family figure is the municipality’s own and one Israeli outlet reports only dozens of evacuations. And a closure of the territory had already been planned for Tuesday’s election, so this is not purely a response to Friday’s attack.